STANDPOINT EPISTEMOLOGY:
MARXIST AND FEMINIST
Gurminder K Bhambra
30th October 2013
ROOM CHANGES …
Date
Lecture
GKB 3-4
GKB 4-5
NG 4-5
30/10/13
S0.21
S0.08
S0.08
S0.28
6/11/13
F107
F107
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13/11/13
L4
L4
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20/11/13
F107
F107
4/12/13
S0.21
S0.08
S0.28
S0.08
S0.28
CAPITALISM: MARX

Capitalism as a system of production requires,
“the confrontation of, and the contact between,
two very different kinds of commodity owners; on
the one hand, the owners of money, means of
production, means of subsistence, who are
eager to valorize the sum of values they have
appropriated by buying the labour power of
others; on the other hand, free workers, the
sellers of their own labour power ... with the
polarization of the commodity market into these
two classes, the fundamental conditions of
capitalist production are present.”

Marx Capital Volume 1 (Penguin edition) p874
MARX’S ANALYSIS

There are two key questions for Marx:
How do things become scarce?
 How do we understand the particular form of modern
subjectivity and the social relationships associated with it?
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The answer lies in the move to bourgeois private
property and the ‘possessive individual’
Historically, possession is based on dispossession
The process of creating individuals is one of
dispossession – taking from people ‘common’ rights
and replacing these with ‘individual’ rights
STANDPOINT OF THE PROLETARIAT

Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, 1923
Relationship between proletariat as a sociological
and as a normative category
 Lukacs is writing after the revolutionary moment
in advanced capitalism appears to have passed
(i.e. Russian revolution and not German)
 What is the explanatory claim of the theory?
 Empiricism can be criticised but not by
dispensing with the empirical, that would be a
form of idealism

MARX’S THEORY OF LEARNING

Marx has a theory of learning:
What the proletariat must become is a theory of
learning.
 If they don’t learn the lesson, why don’t they learn
the lesson?


False consciousness – this undercuts the theory of learning.
Who is to educate the educators?
 From class-in-itself to class-for-itself
 But does Marx already have the solution?
 What if his ‘sociological’ analysis of the contradictions
of capitalism is not correct?

WHAT IS FEMINISM?
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‘biology is not destiny’
‘one is not born woman’ (or man) Simone de Beauvoir
Gender is a product of social conventions and relationships
These social conventions have de-valued women’s
contribution and restricted women’s roles
First wave feminism largely political
Second wave feminism concerned with obstacles to
achieving equality
Third wave feminism, post-feminism, focused on choice and
difference
Second wave feminism can be seen to have been
characterised, in academic terms, in terms of a feminist
empiricism, followed by feminist standpoint theory
FEMINIST EMPIRICISM

Discovery of women as ‘missing’ from academic research
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Academic research structured by men and men’s experiences
Research based on an address of gender (women) revealed
weaknesses in existing approaches and theories
Women were ‘situated’ by feminism to be able to identify that
women’s experience was under-researched
There was an implicit ‘empiricist’ understanding of where the
problem was located – in the bias created by male sexism
It was believed that ‘sexism and androcentrism are social
biases correctable by stricter adherence to the existing
methodological norms of scientific inquiry’ (Harding,
Science Question, p24)
This position, however, is unstable.
FEMINIST STANDPOINT THEORY
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Social scientific knowledge is produced in relation to values
and value positions reflect social positions (Weber)
Feminism should be committed ‘not to truth, objectivity and
neutrality, but to theoretical positions openly acknowledged as
observer and context specific’ (Grosz, What is Feminist
Theory?)
This raises the questions: which context specific positions, and
why?
Two responses to this
(1): standpoint theory can be grounded in the contexts of those who
are disadvantaged, or more specifically, oppressed
 (2): there is no objectivity or universalism and that claims to this
disguise a real particularism

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‘The project of women’s equal inclusion meant that only
women’s sameness to men, only women’s humanity and not
their womanliness could be discussed’ (Grosz)
HARTSOCK’S FEMINIST STANDPOINT
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‘I set off from Marx’s proposal that a correct vision of
class society is available from only one of the two
major class positions’ – incorrect
Hartsock draws a parallel with Marxism, arguing
that, ‘like the lives of proletarians according to
Marxian theory, women's lives make available a
particular and privileged vantage point on male
supremacy’ (1983:284).
Equating women’s lives to those of proletarians, but
there is no basis to that equivalence theoretically

The standpoint of the proletariat for Lukacs was a
standpoint of theory not of the proletariat; the proletariat
were privileged for a theoretical reason, not necessarily an
empirical one; their oppression is the basis on which the
capitalist system turns
ISSUES TO CONSIDER

If the problem of 'male universalism' is the false incorporation of
'different others', what is it that says that all women share the same
interests?
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Might not standpoint theory be a form of 'essentialism' that falsely
incorporates all women under a single position, despite differences among
women?
Why should we think that oppression is a source of epistemological
privilege?
Which women should be listened to? Or is the standpoint of women
just a disguised version of the 'privilege' of the theorist who speaks on
behalf of others and, therefore, not really that different to the attitude
attributed to male theorists?
If ‘men see the world in one way, women in another; on what possible
grounds other than gender loyalties can we decide between these
conflicting accounts?’ (Harding ‘Rethinking’, page 86)